Destiny (Nipping it in the Bud)
by ShadowkittenMF
Summary: Akemi Homura is going to be released from the hospital, in two days. Two days before she will meet her Destiny. A stranger enters her life. What will this mean for her?


Destiny

(Nipping it in the Bud)

* * *

It was a modern hospital room. Sterile, white walls and floor. Simple. The window was open, and a gentle breeze blew. Cherry petals wafted in.

In the bed lay a young girl, about 13 years old. She wore purple silk pajamas. Her hair was jet black, in two tightly-braided pony-tails.

"Akemi-san, you have a visitor."

Her eyes opened. Dark violet eyes.

"Oh, is that so? Umm. OK."

Akemi Homura sat up in bed, and with a smile picked up her glasses. She slipped them on, and glanced at her wall calendar. It was the 14th. Two more days, and she would be released! The envelope on the table beside her hospital bed confirmed that on the 25th, she would transfer into Mitakihara Middle School. Sadly, she would miss the first day of school on the 18th, but at least she'd get in.

She heard the door to her room open. She glanced up. A girl about her age entered the room. She had short dark brown hair, unkempt except for a strand held together by two purple hairpins, and golden-orange eyes. She wore a white blouse, long-sleeves rolled up to her elbows, a grey or faded black tie, and a fingerless elbow-length glove on her right arm. Her left wrist had a grey bracelet. She wore a pink skirt with white trim, but also half of a pink and white plaid skirt. A black leather belt hung down over this, and a white stuffed animal of uncertain species hung off of the belt, suspended by a chrome ring. On her left leg she wore a pink and black thigh-high stocking. Her right leg, beneath a leather garter-belt, was a black knee-length sock. On her feet she wore brown loafers.

"Hello. Uh, do I know you?"

The girl smirked, and closed the door behind her. She pranced over to Homura's bedside.

"Nope."

Homura blinked.

"Oh. Well. Do you have the right room?"

She nodded once.

"Akemi Homura, sickly little thing. Bad heart, right? Gonna be released in two days. Have a brand new life start ... almost like you're gonna be a new person. Right?"

"You ... you know who I am?"

"Sure do."

The girl's smirk twisted, into a virtual snarl.

"I think you should leave."

"Sorry kid. Can't do that. And it's nothing personal ya know? Just gotta nip a problem like you in the bud, before it grows into something we can't take care of."

Homura's eyes went wide. The girl's expression, her tone of voice ...

"I don't know what you're talking about! Please, just leave and I promise you that I won't do anything bad, to you or anyone!"

The girl shrugged, and with a chuckle, held her left hand in front of her. As Homura watched with amazement, a silver ring on the middle finger of that hand melted. Shifted. Before Homura's wide-eyed gaze, it became an orange crystal egg, encased in a silver metal framework. There was a flash of light, causing Homura to blink.

She gasped in terror.

The girl had changed. A patch now covered her right eye. She wore a black jacket with a long train and front over a white frilly blouse and red tie. Her hands were not visible, due to large, frilly cuffs. In place of a skirt, she wore black spats. White thigh-high stockings were tucked into mid-thigh cuffed black leather boots. Abruptly, claws slid out noiselessly, three out of each of her sleeves. Solid and energy at once, they ended in wicked, scythe-like blades.

"Nighty-night, sweetie!"

Homura opened her mouth to scream, and at once started to scramble away, toward the foot of her bed. But the girl moved in a blur. Before Homura knew what had happened, she felt intense pain across the front of her chest. She fell backward in shock, her purple silk pajama top coming off of her body in pieces. Three red lines across her belly began to ooze blood.

The girl was on top of her in the next moment. Homura kicked upward with both of her feet, but it was as though she was kicking a brick wall. She impacted the floor, her head hitting the wall behind her. Dazed. She didn't have time to shake off the effects before she felt the claws again tear at her. Her left side screamed in agony, hot thick fluid coating her body and the remaining scraps of her pajama top and her pajama bottoms and the floor beneath her.

And then Homura saw the girl raise an arm. The claws glinted like metal in the light. Came sweeping down at her face ...

The door to her room opened, and a nurse ran in. That nurse could only scream.

All she found in the room were the shredded bloody remains of purple silk pajamas. And a pool of blood spreading across the hospital floor from beside the empty, unmade bed.

And on the floor at the foot of the bed, a pair of twisted and mangled red-rimmed glasses with shattered lenses.


End file.
